Saturday, October 21, 2006

Living in the Light of the Absolute, or Time and How it Gets That Way (9.27.08)

In any attempt to bridge the domains of experience belonging to the spiritual and physical sides of our nature, time occupies the key position. --A. N. Whitehead

I forget. Have we discussed the nature of time yet, except in passing? It seems that we’ve been skirting around the topic for the last dozen or so posts, and you may have noticed that my Minister of Doctrinal Enforcement has made several cogent comments about it. Perhaps it is time to evade the issue head on.

Let us begin with a bobservation from a while back, when I wrote that:

“To beat this conundrum, you must understand the distinction between time and eternity. Eternity is not time everlasting, but timelessness. Time and eternity are actually aspects of one another--they are dialectically related. In one sense, time may be thought of as the serial deployment of something that lies outside time. Thus, eternity is not located in the past or future, because no matter how far you go, you are still dealing with chronological time. Rather, the only possible place it could be is now--not in a temporal now, but an eternal now. As it so happens, the mysterious now, so inexplicable in terms of any model physics has ever come up with, is the intersection of time and eternity, and human beings are the self-aware locus where this occurs--where the vertical meets the horizontal.

“So much trouble is caused by our reliance upon language, which, in its superficial sense, is geared to the problems of matter, not consciousness, much less the ground of consciousness. We often mistake a deficiency of language for a key to truth. In order to discuss these deeper ontological questions, language must be deployed in a special, nonlinear, non-dualistic and poetic way. I attempted to achieve this in my book, whether successfully or unsuccessfully I cannot say (at least for others--it works for me). The ground of existence may be ineffable, but not completely uneffin' believably so.”

Clearly, time is at the heart of the mystery of existence. In fact, time is indistinguishable from existence, which is one of the things that makes it so difficult to describe. And yet, to a certain extent, you must be outside or “above” time in order to perceive it, which in itself provides a key to the mystery. After all, animals are just as much entangled in time as we are, except that they don’t know it. Why? Because an animal is incapable of lifting itself above its own subjectivity, while humans are specifically capable of objectivity. We can “see” time “passing” so to speak, just as we can sit here on this bank of sand with Bob Dylan and watch the river flow. Except that we are also floating on the river we observe, and the river doesn’t run in a straight liner but in circles within circles.

As above, so below. Just as the cosmos contains circles within circles--the rotating earth circling around a star inside a galaxy that is also a revolving and rotating spheroid--our lives consist of circular days within weeks within years within a full trip around the block called a natural lifetime. Esoterists believe that our lives consist of fractal time cycles of varying length, each a reflection of the other; thus, a lifetime can also be thought of as a day, with the morning of childhood, the day of youth, the evening of maturity, the twilight of old age, and the night-womb of death. Or our lives can be thought of as a year: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

But the ancients believed only in the closed circle of eternal return, not the line of growth, which is to say the open spiral. Here again, what distinguishes man is not that we are immersed in the cycles of time, but that we may utilize time to experience endless cycles of growth, or what I call inward mobility. Doing so is the whole point of your existence, assuming you belong to the contemplative or sacerdotal caste to whom I address my blog (most of my detractors are simply innocent members of other castes, i.e., menial or intellectual laborers, shopkeepers, craftsmen, administrators, servants, etc.).

Now, if you are like me--an interior cosmonaut or adventurer of consciousness--you most certainly do not measure your life against some worldly standard, but in the light of the Absolute.

Let me back up a bit. A couple of weeks ago I made a rash statement to the effect that I had abandoned the monastic “ascending” approach that had guided my spiritual practice for some ten years, in favor of a “descending” bobhisattvic approach. That’s true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t really go very far in describing the sort of person I'm not. In fact, my Minister of Doctrinal Enforcement immediately corrected me--I forget what he said exactly--but it was something to the effect that we must always be grateful to the spiritual hermit who gives his life entirely to God and blazes a trail from time to eternity for the rest of us.

For I actually try, insofar as it is possible, to spend as much timelessness in eternity as I can, given the constraints of worldly existence. I was recently discussing this with a friend in a different context. I was trying to explain to him, without success, that there is no such thing as “quality time” with a child, only quantity time in which you will have randomly magical moments of quality timelessness, which is to say, eternity. It is my belief that the concept of quality time was simply invented by guilty parents to convince themselves that they do not have to put in the quantity of time it takes to nurture a deep and profound relationship with your child. It is really a statement about how people still deprive children of their innate dignity and stature. After all, assuming you love your spouse, you don’t just give them an hour of “quality time” here and there and hope for the best.

Well, it’s the same with the Divine, don’t you know. This, of course, is the limitation of churchianity, in which you spend 60-90 minutes per week of quality time with God, or even meditation, in which you spend 20 or 30 minutes a day with him. Doesn’t really work, in my opinion. You and God need some quantity time to really get to know one another.

Now, this is somewhat easy for me to say, because I long ago made a crucial decision that worldly success meant nothing to me if it would deprive me of the time and space I would require to embark on a feckless Adventure of Consciousness. Thus, as long ago as high school, I thought to myself, “I have no idea what I want to do in terms of a career, but whatever it is, it cannot be a normal nine to five full time job working for someone else. The Subgenius must have Slack." Believe it or not, I have kept to this vow. With a few exceptions, I have avoided full time work my entire life.

Or at least paid work. In fact, I am always working, except that those without eyes--say, my in-laws--can’t necessarily see it. For Bob is never doing so much as when it looks as if he is doing nothing. As I have had occasion to mention several times in the past, certain members of other castes might look at my life and conclude that old Head-in-Clouds has a pretty boring existence.

But nothing could be further from the truth. From where I sit, I am embarked on the adventure of a lifetime, except that it is an interior adventure whose progress is measured in light of the absolute, not by some relative external standard. A good day at the office is a day in which I have made progress towards that nonlocal goal, and shared the joy with others. A bad day is one in which I have been pulled away from the center and origin because of some worldly obligation or other exigency. But outward appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, I am always doing something: tilling the soil, planting seeds, fertilizing, pulling weeds, topping the leaves, smoking them, etc.

Now, broadly speaking, there are four kinds of men: pneumatic man, intellectual man, emotional or vital man, and the man of action. And there is an appropriate practice for each--or raja, jnana, bhakti, and karma yogas, which any full-service religion will offer. Each type of yoga, in its own way, tries to provide an appropriate means for experiencing eternity within time. To live “within” religion is to find a way to be, or think, or feel, or act within eternity.

Now, no one has been more shocked than I have about what happens when you begin “thinking” within religion, because to a certain extent, this blog is nothing more or less than that. Like so many people in the modern west, I started off in a place that pretty much equated religion and ignorance. But as it so happens, knowledge of religion is knowledge that is both fruitful and efficacious, not to say transformational. It is nothing at all like “book learning,” or mere mental knowledge. If we grasp religion only with the mind, it is not really "interior" knowledge to which we may validly lay claim.

With the type of thinking I am describing, one is vaulted, so to speak, into a different space, the space from which the primordial mystery perpetually arises. What I have discovered, to my everlasting surprise, is that once in this space, one finds that it actually has its own very real characteristics and attributes. I know this because every day I receive confirmation from fellow explorers who see and experience the same thing. It's as if we are all setting voyage into an unknown sea but all returning with vaguely similar--sometimes strikingly so--descriptions of the flora and fauna on the other side. I can only reemphasize that this is most mysterious indeed.

Look at it this way. Europe only made its way westward to the New World in 1492. The westward exploration continued until the late nineteenth century, when the external frontier was closed. Thus the exploration began delving "within" matter and time with Einstein's revolution, outward into space, and back to the origins of the material universe with big bang cosmology. The detailed exploration of the unconscious only got underway with the publication of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. 21st century spirituality will provide the opportunity for more people to embark on the interior journey, thus situating their lives within the grand evolutionary epic in which we are the central players. If that doesn't happen, then earth will be in for a very bumpy ride.

To summarise: time is not actually possible without eternity, but evolution is not possible without time. Therefore, there is a need to be saved from our apparent separation from the eternal, as we engage in our evolutionary sprint from monkey mind to divine mind. This salvolution perennially occurs in the eternal ground in which we participate at our deepest level. We may be sons of God "through adoption," and thereby be saved from the ravages of time, here and now. We may make the eternal present in us. But it must be "realized” in order to be effective.

The fully realized person has reversed the fall, or turned figure and ground (or time and eternity, absolute and relative) inside out and upside down. He has reversed the vector flow that misleadingly draws consciousness down and out to the terminal more and moraine of the senses. In short, he has realized that the cosmos is tree with its roots aloft, its branches down here below. And it is a Tree of Life for those whose wood beleaf. So don’t be an existential sap. Stop time before it stops you!

What is intelligibly diverse must be unified and whole, and only what is whole and unified can be intelligibly diverse. At the same time, only what is diversified can be intelligibly one.... The reality of time, therefore, establishes concurrently the reality of a whole which is nontemporal.... Time without eternity is strictly inconceivable. --Errol Harris

Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. --Jorge Luis Borges

The mysterious now is the universal ordering principle which embodies the "processual flow" of eternity into serial structure. It is in this sense that human observers give rise to the cosmos that spawned them, and are the irreducible unit of there being a cosmos at all. --Petey

I have escaped and the small self is dead;I am immortal, alone, ineffable;I have gone out from the universe I made,And have grown nameless and immeasurable.

I have become what before Time I was. My heart is a centre of infinityA momentless immensity pure and bare,I stretch to an eternal everywhere. --Sri Aurobindo

Returning to the Oneself, borne againTo the mysterious mamamatrix of our birthdeath,Our winding binding river of lightReaches its deustinocean. --L. Bob Gagdad

*****

If you want to enjoy the springtime of Eternal Slack, you can't be ruled by the colander.

50 Comments:

"For if you veer too strongly toward tradition, you are essentially opting out of time in favor of eternity, which on this plane leads to stagnation and ultimately collapse. But if you veer too far in the other direction by abandoning tradition, you cut man off from his deepest metaphysical roots and create a society that is unfit for man as such."

I agree with this and like the way you have articulated it. Will probably use your point, actually, in some of my own work. The suggestion though is that any ultimate vision for humanity, even one allowing for God's full involvement in the species, will have to allow for the preservation of multiple traditions while at the same time enabling constructuve, community-oriented relationships between people from vastly different traditions. This, in and of itself, strikes me as a "radical" notion.

A second observation relative to this post, and many others, is this. To the extent that you carry and convey some real truth, and I recognize that you do, your ability to contribute your truth nuggets to the evolution of consciousness exists in proportion to others' openness to integrating this truth into their perspective, their willingess to let your truth seep in in ways that gradually address their errors.

This is where the use of ridicule becomes a problem. The moment someone feels ridiculed or attacked, their systems will generate energies that arise in the consciousness in ways that cut off any receptivity they might otherwise have to your message. As an example, if I was someone "emerging" from out of a perspective that now identifies itself with either "leftists" or "Islamists", no matter how open my mind might be or how great my thirst for truth, I would not be likely to "pick up" truth here. This is because your approach would so often provoke defensive energies in my being that I would not be able to calmly and rationally consider your views. Some level of openness must precede integration, and if you attack something I'm still identified with, then no matter how open I may be when I arrive here, the energies your attackes provoke will arise to close me off.

I guess it all just depends upon what you wish to accomplish with this blog, future books, etc. If you "win" by putting forth rational arguments with a style that you have fun with, and from experiencing the perverse pleasures of ridiculing others, then that is your gig, one worthy of a "golf clap" from the Heavens. If, however, you fancy yourself as having sufficient game to actually reach the hearts, minds, and spirits of the people that you call out as the "problem children" of the world, if you want to actually contribute to the evolution of their consciousness and thus the consciousness of the whole, then you are talking about a different game entirely.

Loved your play on "Stuck in the Middle" lyrics. Here is a 'lil diddie that pops to my mind now...

He said "Drifter can ya make folks cry when you play and sing?Have you paid your dues, can you moan the blues?Can you bend them guitar strings?"He said "Boy, can you make folks feel what you feel inside?Cause if you're big star bound let me warn ya, its a long, hard ride"

Whoa, Dude!!! You rock! That was like a bolt of lightening...Freaky, geeky, slackers unite! Good to know others have succeeded on such a twisted path or should I say spiral! ha ha!

Interesting how the spine itself is spiral. I like to imagine it elongating in a spiral fashion and inflating with breath on each movement...A spine is a necessary thing to have, unless you are an invertabrate or leftist, that must be a perfect combination of flexibility and strength.

Fair enough, but to 'measure' oneself in light of the absolute necessitates the involvment of some absolute metric by which all are, ultimately, measured by. I have a hard time imagining any such metric other than that of our effectiveness at realizing and drawing others into living expressions of God's truth. Depending on the tone, content, and spirit of our humor, it seems that it can either aid or hinder our efforts along such lines.

By the way, thanks for turning me onto "Meditations on the Tarot". I'm still having a hard time devloping the discipline to move through in the most efficacious manner but have enjoyed what my discoveries in it thus far.

>>Therefore, there is a need to be saved from our apparent separation from the eternal . . . <<

I think we accomplish just this if we come to perceive time in its mysterious twofold nature - like nothing else in existence, what we know as time partakes of the "Original Nothing", which is what makes time so mysteriously elusive. It's there; it's not there. Our mission is to relocate ourselves to the semicolon, between the there and not-there.

There have been those with the mystical inclining toward *obliteration", the return to the timelessness of the Nothing. This might be a "ecstasy of nature" pagan impulse. It's why, I think, some people find thunderous waterfalls the ideal place for suiciding. Others, like E.A. Poe (a genuine and genuinely tortured mystic) seek a permanent mystic one-ness/timelessness in the obliteration of consciousness via alcohol, drugs, sex, etc.

But linear time (and its companion Space) is obviously the Great Gift. Without linear time, we're only potentiality. Linear time means full self-awareness, for us, for our Creator. Even dream-time with its shaky self-awareness, has its own linearity, even if it's soaked in timelessness - you could fall asleep and dream for a hundred years, and when you awake, you'd still probably think another night of 6-7 hours sleep had passed. Still, in dreams we are conscious individuals, so dreams must take place in a kind of linear time.

Again, the divine commission, I believe, is to find the nexus of time and timelessness - too much emphasis on one or the other is to invite self-destruction.

And Lisa - cool observation about the spine/spiral. There is, in fact, a life-force energy that wends its way up the spine via the spiral. (something I think all Pilates teachers should know, Pilates being a yoga for Westerners)

Yes, right, Will. Think of an upsurge of energy in the front line of the body as you inhale through the nose and a rush of energy cascading over and around your ears, down through the spine and legs, out the heel. Much like a waterfall and continue to lift and elongate with each breath. Coincidentally, this helps one become more vertical in a purely physical way! Giving one's body space to lift up and free itself will also allow the mind to relax and open in new and exciting ways. It is amazing how much physical pain and discomfort can affect one's personality and demeanor. You can never cut it out entirely, damn gravity!, but it sure helps to eliminate the unnecessary crap such as poor posture.

I know I've mentioned this before, but if you chant AUM, you will notce that when done properly, a deep AHHHHH will resonate in the stomach area, while shifting to the UHHHH brings the energy up through the heart into the throat, and the MMMMM takes place right above the eyes--in third eye, to be exact. Try it in the shower for maximum resonance, and vibrate along with the cosmos.

Jesus exemplified one aspect of eternity on the cross. He was in the center and the two thieves were on the left and right. The one on the left pleads to be "remembered". This one is the thief of the past who steals our present yet did exist and must be integrated (re-membered) for us to truly be and receive the present. The one on the right, the thief of the future, never existed and never will. He can only scornful of our attempts to live in the present and can never be a part of us. Only the fully integrated being can be in paradise today.

"Clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right, here we are, stuck in the middle with you" (I know someone quoted this before on this blog - just can't remember!

>>"The moment someone feels ridiculed or attacked, their systems will generate energies that arise in the consciousness in ways that cut off any receptivity they might otherwise have to your message."<<

B.P.

The sad fact of the matter is that unless someone has given up their ego to the point of not "feeling slighted" and shutting down, fully realizing the havoc which anger and resentment have wrought in their lives, they will only use the wisdom put forth here to rationalize their own agenda rather than further the agenda of truth.Doesn't matter how touchy feely Bob gets, the results will be the same.In my opinion it's better to titilate those destuctive impulses, to bring them to the surface so that maybe their destructiveness can be recognized, or not. And don't kid yourself, there is no true openness when a person is in this state of mind. Good natured humility and sincere curiosity is needed to hang here, something which is sorely lacking in most of Bob's detractors.

>>"Now, broadly speaking, there are four kinds of men: pneumatic man, intellectual man, emotional or vital man, and the man of action."<<

Bob,

You have posted this before on previous days and each time I have thought about where I fit. Is it possible to be relatively equal parts of all of these?I find that when I focus on only one or two for a time to the total or even partial exclusion of the others, my life (being) seems diminished. I feel the need for all these categories on a weekly if not daily basis.

Yes, everyone is a mixture of each, but each person generally has a dominant type. The only exception would be certain members of the lowest caste, who can do no better for themselves than to be obedient. I know it sounds harsh, but let's be honest, we all know they exist. Left to their own devices, they destroy their own lives.

Assuming the purity of your love offering, remittance of one cardinal sin; or absolution for three venial sins, trespasses, indiscretions, or girlish pecadillos; forgivenness for one week of backsliding; immunity from prosecution for one heresy (or blasphemy); or commutation for one Democratic vote (unless it was for McGovern--fee is negotiable).

Hmmm...I either gotta hit the tin cup a few more times or choose between a cardinal sin or an indiscretion.

Does it help if I tell you that my very first vote was for Jimmah Cahtah? I quickly learned to rue it because I got a job instead of going to college. See, right there, if I had been slackin' in college, I'd have voted Democrat many more times. As it was, Jimmy was my last-ever Dem vote. That oughta help some, right?

Geez, If I weren't so broke I'd see if I could work out a deal on some bad vibes and negative thoughts. They ought to be cheaper than actual committed sins since I've kept most of 'em inside and not let them out to annoy anyone.

Time. At four years of age a year is a very long time. At fifty four, not so long. The length of the week before pay day is directly proportionate to the amount of money in left the checking account. An hour laughing and talking with your best friends is gone before it begins. An hour at the DMV is a different span of time entirely. Forty seconds is no time at all. Unless you're surfing a good wave, in which case it's a good long ride. In those rare instances when you get in the tube you experience a brief glimpse of eternity. Ten seconds there seems like time enough to count all the water droplets in the curl.

I'm not going to rip away Vittles, I don't think you were trying to puff yourself up, I do think you're misunderstanding & misreading the situation, but at this point I'm not seeing the attitude that needs a slamming.

Keep in mind this is all just my opinion. Humor, IMHO, is the sudden integration of two concepts that wouldn't normally be connected, but are united due to an usual common denominator that wouldn't normally associate the two, except for the circumstance it's being used in. When we get the logic of the mis-relation, we get a chuckle or a laugh - or a sneer, depending on the nature of the integration, intent and the joke teller.

The Ridicule flavor of Humor, properly used will draw your attention to circumstances or values that are inappropriately matched. Someone who's putting on false airs’ of being high & pious, can be shown their folly "You've become a veritable fount of wisdom since being made shift supervisor, eh Bub?", and if willing, the target will chuckle and deflate his pretensions - or if he's too rapt up in them, he will intensify his pretensions. That's his choice and responsibility, not the Jokers.

Humor improperly used will seek to drag a virtue downwards to the vulgar and physical for the purpose not of making the target chuckle at himself, but to feel embarrassment and pain. "Good idea Bub, next time I want such intelligent advice I'll ask a freaking Mongoloid!"

I'd put the vast bulk of Bob's humor in the first category, not the second. I've got to admit to having a not nearly so favorable mix to my jab's, but in my defense, most of the (usually leftist) pretensions I strike at are ones I see as clearly being a direct and destructive threat to my children’s lives, and I react accordingly.

I’d also keep in mind that the point of One Cosmos is wisdom, and its style is it’s style, and humor used effectively, and I think Gagdad’s humor is very effective, and can help people to see relations and draw conclusions and realizations that wouldn’t otherwise be made.

And of course those who don’t enjoy it are most free to find a venue more suitable for them. Keep in mind though, sometimes a joke is just a joke, and recreational humor among friends is just plain Fun!

Ah, nothin says romance, love, heartbreak, wistfulness, etc., etc., like the word "time". Ever just be sitting there, wishin' you could own a whole collection of songs with the word "time" in the title? Well, now you can! Here's only a sample of the songs you get when you order the "Songs With the Word "Time" In Them" CD set: -

Bidin' My Time

By the Time I Get To Phoenix

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Tomorrow Is A Long Time

Time Is On My Side

Let The Good Times Roll

Funny How Time Slips Away

Gimme That Ole Time Relgion

Time Won't Let Me

Hard Time Don't Come Around No More

Hot Time In the Old Town Tonight

Time Passes Slowly

It's Just A Matter Of Time

Not A Second Time

Right Time Of The Night

Pickin' Time

Time After Time

Well, you get the idea. There's a LOTTA songs with the word "time" in the title. In fact, we've counted 72 songs alone with the words "time" and "love" in the title. And you wouldn't believe the number of songs with the words "time" and "night" in the title. But that just goes to show ya - there's just something about the word "time". Order now! While there's still "time"!

Also, sometimes a quick bracing slap, whether delivered with an open hand or a sharp wit, is the most appropriate response to an offense - and not delivering it could be a far worse 'sin', than doing so.

Trivia: the great single Time Won't Let Me was by Cleveland's own Outsiders, who had a couple of members who were later members of the Raspberries, the greatest of all post-60's power pop groups. It's a crime that they aren't in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Yea, you're back on! Will, Not to leave out "As Time Goes By". Has anyone noticed that when the hands are in the prayer position it naturally opens the heart, relaxes the shoulders and allows the breath to connect us to Spirit. Am off to test the shower "Oming" instructions from the Master Bobble Head and then play "As Time Goes By" on the piano. By the way, Confucius says" to live without a colander is to have no colander at all." Lisa, thanks for keeping us vertical.

JWM-Thank you for the inspiration!Keep on fightin', my friend.Or, in the words of BTO: keep Taking care of business, everyday,taking care of business, every way,taking care of business, It's all right,taking care of business,working overtime.

I go back and forth between seeing time as something real or intrinsic to reality itself - whatever that means - and, otoh, not existing or being only a rather artificial aspect of movement.

Do we need time in order to have movement, or can we just have movement? In the end I don't really care, except that I think there is a temptation to objectify time into a "thing in itself" which is separate from everything else, thus perhaps becoming some kind of "other", and even a threat.

For example, if you look at the hands of a clock, all you really see is movement. Or maybe more - time? Who cares?

I guess I don't really need time, except to make arrangements and measure things, or as an expectation of events which move, like the sun rising again.

[Do I really need time to have a concept of "rising" or "again". I don't know.]

I think Gagdad Bob actually covered this idea by saying that the eternal is always now. That's the way I see it.

On the question of whether Gagdad Bob - or anyone else - should be more "touchy-feely", I agree with hoarhey.

Why mess around worrying about other people's hypothetical problems? You'll never get it right and will always be being required to apologize and react to the group. We've seen quite enough of this kind of dead-end neurosis already - noble facilitators of the path to truth and self-knowledge trying to get everyone to apologize for being alive and having to make decisions, especially in the case of George Bush, enc..

To Leftist empths, give it up. I myself do not want your "help", however well-intended you think it is. Go save yourselves first.

Krishnamurti was always asking people why they don't just do it the easy way and make a great leap out of their self-doubt in one step, as opposed to always demanding innumerable "steps" to awareness and freedom.

As a slacker myself, too, I like the easy way. It also requires less "help".

“I have no idea what I want to do in terms of a career, but whatever it is, it cannot be a normal nine to five full time job working for someone else. The Subgenius must have Slack."

I'm with you, Bob. I'm fortunate to have had a job that allows me to work part time and still make a decent living. You get to a point where making more money will only result in you getting a bigger house, a nicer car, etc. What's the point. I wouldn't be any more or less happy, and no matter how much money I make, I can't buy time While I would like to say I have spent all this slack time contemplating the meaning of life, I have, in fact spent a large portion of it, well, slacking. While I believe I have much the same mind set or make up as you, I do not have the intellectual capacity of you or some of your commenter's . C. S. Lewis is more my speed rather than the Summa of St. Thomas.

“...certain members of other castes might look at my life and conclude that old Head-in-Clouds has a pretty boring existence.”

I've run into this a lot and never really known how to respond to this. The typical American attitude is you are not living unless you are striving for the maximum amount of money and possessions and as close as possible to a continuous state of excitement. If your life is not like a beer commercial you are a hopeless loser.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull dayYou fritter and waste the hours in an off hand wayKicking around on a piece of ground in your home townWaiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rainYou are young and life is long and there is time to kill todayAnd then one day you find ten years have got behind youNo one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinkingAnd racing around to come up behind you againThe sun is the same in the relative way, but youre olderShorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the timePlans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled linesHanging on in quiet desperation is the english wayThe time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say

Home, home againI like to be here when I canAnd when I come home cold and tiredIts good to warm my bones beside the fireFar away across the fieldThe tolling of the iron bellCalls the faithful to their kneesTo hear the softly spoken magic spells.

“After all, assuming you love your spouse, you don’t just give them an hour of “quality time” here and there and hope for the best.”

Actually, there are many high-powered two-career couples who do just that. And then they wonder why their marriages collapse.

"Well, it’s the same with the Divine, don’t you know. This, of course, is the limitation of churchianity, in which you spend 60-90 minutes per week of quality time with God, or even meditation, in which you spend 20 or 30 minutes a day with him. Doesn’t really work, in my opinion. You and God need some quantity time to really get to know one another."

Hey, Bob, what's with the Minnesotaisms? Have you been watching Fargo too many times? Anyway, I'm reminded of an old Christian song by Larnelle Harris called "I miss my Time with You", that goes:

I miss my time with youthose moments togetherI need to be with you each dayand it hurts me when you sayyou're too busybusy trying to serve mebut how can you serve mewhen you're spirit's empty

true words, for sure.

"As I have had occasion to mention several times in the past, certain members of other castes might look at my life and conclude that old Head-in-Clouds has a pretty boring existence."

There is an absolutely poisonous phrase that Busy Christians and activist Wallis disciples use to accuse those of us who are seekers: “You’re so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good”. To which I reply, “you’re so earthly minded you have no heavenly idea.”

On exploration: there is a lesson to be learned from the exploitoration of the New World and the American frontier (no Marxist diatribe, I promise). It was mainly the work of horizontal minded men (most of whom called themselves Christians) that was responsible for the murder and enslavement that accompanied much of the conquest of the New World; these were men only seeking gold, wealth and status, and blind to the beauty and wonder of this new world. It was folks like Darwin, Bates, Humboldt, Wilson, Audubon, Bartram, and Muir who saw the wonder of this new world and thankfully recorded it painstakingly, to the enrichment of us all. Also, it was rare vertical-minded missionaries like Livingstone and Hudson Taylor who brought Christ to foreign lands, rather than following on the heels of conquerors and bringing American and European culture and trinkets.

Bob, some of your invented words sound like the titles of Cocteau Twins songs (Summerhead, Multifoiled, Itchy Glowblo Blow, etc). Which is cool in my book.

Will, regarding songs with “Time in them”; one of the saddest, most desolate pop songs I know of is Alan Parsons’ “Time”, with its slow, dirge-like beat and its matter-of-fact observation that “Time keeps rolling like a river, to the Sea”. This to me is a picture of how the nihilist sees the world; meaningless, desolate, just a river of time that sweeps us out to see with no more concern for us than a piece of rock.

Will, regarding songs with “Time” in them; one of the saddest, most desolate pop songs I know of is Alan Parsons’ “Time”, with its slow, dirge-like beat and its matter-of-fact observation that “Time keeps rolling like a river, to the Sea”. This to me is a picture of how the nihilist sees the world; meaningless, desolate, just a river of time that sweeps us out to sea with no more concern for us than a piece of rock.

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About Me

Location: Floating in His Cloud-Hidden Bobservatory, Inside the Centers for Spiritual Disease Control and Pretension, Tonga

Who?! spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!